


Doting

by AceRinky (Asexual_Ravioli), Asexual_Ravioli



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Light Angst, Married Couple, Pregnancy, transgender ymir
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-26
Updated: 2019-08-26
Packaged: 2020-09-26 18:48:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20394436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asexual_Ravioli/pseuds/AceRinky, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asexual_Ravioli/pseuds/Asexual_Ravioli
Summary: Yes, Historia thought. It had become increasingly clear, from the day the pregnancy test read positive, that Ymir would do anything for Historia and their baby. The only thing she wouldn’t do was stop worrying.





	Doting

“Don’t carry that,” Ymir barked and snatched the small potted cactus from Historia’s hands.

“It weighs like a pound,” Historia said.

“You don’t need extra pounds.”

“Did you just…”

“I mean! You’re carrying our child.”

“You called me fat,” Historia said with a grin. “You jerk!”

“I did not! I’m just lightening the load for you. Don’t carry shit,” Ymir said, pointing the cactus at her. A little of its dirt fell from the pot and onto the sidewalk. “Don’t worry. You’re perfect. Gorgeous. Don’t cry. Please don’t cry. But if you feel like crying just let it out, you know—"

Historia laid a hand on her huge belly. “Yim, I am not gonna—”

“COUCH COMING THROUGH!” Eren said and they turned to see him laying on a leather couch carried by a struggling Reiner and Bert.

“How’d you get them to go along with that?” Ymir asked.

Eren stretched luxuriantly. “I paid them.”

Reiner tilted the couch, sending Eren careening into the grass.

“Yeah, about that,” Reiner said. “I’m upping my fee from $10 to $20. Per yard traveled.”

Eren spat grass. “Steep,” he muttered, getting to his feet. “I’m gonna go find the first aid kit…Asshole.”

“It’s packed in with the baby stuff,” Ymir said. “Because you’re a baby?”

“I got it.”

Right. The baby stuff, Historia thought. There’d been mountains of it. Stupidly bought by Ymir several months in advance. Bought before they moved.

Then, the rest of their friends had ditched out on the moving plans, leaving only Reiner, Bert, Eren, and Ymir to carry the heavy stuff. Historia had nothing to do.

She rubbed at her aching back. She was 35 weeks along, and despite the doctor’s reassurances, Ymir still treated every moment as if her wife could die. Sure, Historia was waited on hand and foot, but she was NEVER left alone. Historia didn’t want to be the nagging wife, so she kept her grievances on the downlow.

She looked up the walkway, to the summer lake house Ymir’s parents had owned for decades. Giddy with the prospect of a grandchild, they’d given it no strings attached to the happy couple. It was gorgeous. A huge, Tudor style home with Lake Sina as its backyard. How could Historia ask for anything more?

She let Reiner and Bert pass her by with the couch. When they set it down in the living room—her living room, she reminded herself—she would home in on the couch and rest. If she couldn’t carry a plant without her wife having a hemorrhage, she’d rest.

“Hissy,” Ymir said. “You’re laying down when they get that couch settled. HURRY UP,” she called after Bert and Reiner.

Historia sighed. “No, I think I’d like to take a look at the garden again.”

“Seriously? You know you can’t garden in your condition.”

“I can’t do anything,” she mumbled back. She walked past Ymir, ignoring her confused stare.

“Don’t go in the garden!” Ymir said, grabbing her arm.

“_Ymir,_” Historia said, the tension rising in her voice. “I’m _going_ to the garden.”

Ymir shrugged. “Okay. Fine. Ruin the surprise.”

Historia ignored her, pulling back the curtains that revealed the backyard. But what she saw wasn’t the lake and the grass and the small garden she planned to expand. She saw a huge, long wooden table piled with food. The rest of her friends, all the ones who’d supposedly ducked out on moving furniture today, bustled about. Annie was on top of a chair, stringing cheery yellow lantern lights. Mikasa stood at the bottom, stubbornly waiting to catch her wife if she fell. Connie had stuffed two party honker things into his nostrils and was blowing them, making a hooting noise Historia could hear through the glass. Jean and Marco were laying out utensils. Sasha was sampling the food.

“Oh my God,” Historia said.

Ymir put her arm around her. “It’s not ready yet but…Surprise.”

Historia ducked her head and smiled. “You’re too much.”

“Anything for my family,” Ymir said.

“Don’t…make a pregnant woman cry,” Historia said, and Ymir pulled her closer.

“Let’s go out there. All your friends are waiting.”

Connie exhaled through his nose, hooting the party blowers until Jean threw them to the ground and slapped Connie upside the head.

“Thanks, Jean,” Sasha said through a mouthful of pasta.

“Hey,” Connie said to her. “Maybe cool it on the food before—”

“I’m eating for two!” Sasha said.

Her boyfriend went into shock, throwing up his hands and shuffling his feet in a sort of interpretive dance similar, Historia thought, to what Ymir had done when she announced their own baby.

“Whaaaa…” Connie said.

“Really?! Congratulations!” Marco beamed.

“Yes,” Sasha said, proudly laying a hand on her belly. “You see, there are two wolves inside us all. And one of them wants pasta, while the other wants ice cream. The one that wins is the one that you f—”

Connie threw a serving fork at her. “DON’T MAKE JOKES LIKE THAT.”

“If there were two wolves,” Jean said, “you’d be eating for three.”

“Hey. Math was never my—”

Then Annie “accidentally” dropped a string of lanterns onto Sasha’s head.

“Sorry, Sasha…Anyway,” Annie said to Mikasa. “I Told you Ymir would blow the surprise.”

“Yeah, well. You took that side of the bet before I got a chance.” And then Mikasa handed Annie twenty dollars.

“Do I get a slice of that?” Ymir asked.

Historia pulled out a chair (everyone insisted that she sit at the head of the table) and eyed the spread of food. Fat wedges of all kinds of cheese, bordered by what Ymir had for months been calling Historia’s “pre-natal crackers of choice.” Plates of soft homemade bread accompanied by slabs of creamy pale yellow butter. A pie that would prove to be apricot, lovingly crafted by Sasha (and later eaten, almost exclusively, by that same baker). Heaping bowls of fresh arugula salads. Cuts of tender, roasted pork. The table was overflowing.

When all the lights were strung and lit, casting gold haloes that attracted humming insects the bug spray couldn’t drive off, when the sun just dipped sleepy and pink beyond the lake, when all her beautiful, wonderful friends were seated, Historia raised her glass of grape juice in a toast.

“I—”

“Everyone!” Ymir said, standing and almost breaking her glass as loud as she was smacking it with her fork. “A toast!”

A chorus of yeah’s.

“When Historia and I got married, I swore to protect her no matter what. So you could imagine how terrified I was to find out that her four foot eleven frame, uh, would get put under so much stress.”

Laughter and cheering around the table. Historia gave her wife a begrudging half smile.

“Anyway,” Ymir went on. “This party is my way of saying that I would do anything to keep my family happy.”

Yes, Historia thought. It had become increasingly clear, from the day the pregnancy test read positive, that Ymir would do anything for Historia and their baby. The only thing she wouldn’t do was stop worrying.

Ymir kept on toasting, and when the tears fell down Historia’s face, she passed them off as joyful ones.

“And I’m telling you I like doing dishes,” Historia said for the fifth time. As fun as the party had been, as entertaining as her friends were, Historia needed a moment to relax.

“Okay. I’ll dry,” Ymir said and grabbed a dishtowel.

Historia huffed. “Fine.”

“Hormones?”

Wrong. Thing. To say. But Historia clenched her jaw and went on washing.

“Hormones, yes,” she said under her breath. She scrubbed at the dish that had cooked the creamy pasta sauce they’d all eaten to excess. Historia could feel Ymir’s eyes on her. “You know I love you,” she said softly. “But—”

“But what?” Ymir’s voice was terrified, as if she feared Historia would divorce her, leave her, just like that. Stupid, doting worry.

The pan slipped from Historia’s grasp, into the sudsy water.

“Ow…ow ow! Ymir? Ow?!” Historia doubled over in pain.

“Oh…uh, shit fuck let’s…”

Historia clenched at Ymir’s arm, her other hand on her stomach. “Get the car. We have to go. NOW, Ymir.”

Leaving the house was a blur for Ymir: after stammering a terrified stream of gibberish that only Annie could decipher (“I think Historia, like, popped. Along with Ymir’s brain.”), and a sprint to the car, and a sprint back to the house in a frantic search for fucking keys, Ymir got into the car where her wife waited silently, already buckled, the baby bag thrown in the back.

You’re suffering, Ymir thought. Historia’s eyes were pulled shut tight, both hands held to her belly. She sighed and moaned.

“Ymir. Drive or something?”

“Um. OH, YEAH.”

Ymir started up the car and peeled out of the long driveway, running over more than one hapless shrub.

“Are you okay?”

“…I’m in labor, Ymir.”

Ymir broke out in another cold sweat and stayed silent. For a moment.

“But it hurts,” Ymir put in.

“Stop. Talking.”

“Are you sure?”

Historia doubled over in a contraction. Tears sprang to Ymir’s eyes, and she swiped at them as she sped through a yellow light. A twenty-minute drive to the ER, less if she was booking it like this. God, why hadn’t Ymir pushed harder on renting that townhouse five minutes from the hospital? Sure the lake house was what they wanted but…Stupid, stupid, stupid.

The time passed with Ymir’s heart in her throat. Her grip was sure to make permanent imprints on the steering wheel, the way Historia was crying out in agony.

At last the hospital came into sight. Ymir skidded the car to a stop, parked, and sprinted to Historia’s door.

“Hissy,” she said. “Let’s…Oh my God, you’re locked in. Fuck.” She jiggled the handle, about to bust the window with her own forehead when Historia calmly unlocked the door from the inside (duh) and moved to step out.

“Ymir…”

“Don’t get out! I’ll…” She looked back at the hospital doors. “I’ll get a wheelchair.”

“No, just…shut up. I can walk on my own.”

Another contraction hit, nearly buckling Historia to her knees. If Ymir hadn’t been there to catch her…

“Get OFF of me, Ymir!”

Ymir froze and took a step back. “What?”

“I wanted a cottage style house, Ymir.” Her head hung low, and her tears hit the pavement as Ymir looked on in horror. “ I wanted…a cottage for us. With a small garden that wouldn’t get flooded by a whole damn lake.”

“We can move. I’ll move us. I’ll do anything—”

“THEN JUST LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE FOR ONCE.”

Historia drew the bangs that had fallen in her face and said, “I’m…sorry. I wanted to tell you before, but I don’t want you in the delivery room with me.”

“Historia…”

Two hospital staff came out with a wheelchair.

“I’m sorry,” Historia said. “I need a…”—she flinched as another wave of pain hit—“I need a breather.”

“But I’m the mom,” Ymir said, lost, as Historia sat down in the chair.

“And so am I,” Historia said with a weak smile. “Stay in the waiting room or I’ll kill you.”

Ymir was left standing there alone, until her friends found her.

“You have been a real mama bear,” Reiner said in the waiting room.

“Insufferable,” Mikasa said without looking from her phone.

“Ditto,” from Annie.

“I’d have murdered you yesterday,” Sasha said. Everyone else nodded.

Ymir sat crouched, head in her hands. “You’re all very helpful.”

It had been well over an hour, and the sting of rejection was more like a vise.

“Where the fuck is the doctor…”

“Doctoring?” Connie said.

“He’ll be super busy right now,” Bert said.

“Based on how fast you said the contractions were coming,” Armin said, “it could be any minute now.”

“How should I know?” Ymir said. “I wasn’t even timing them. This is all my fault…”

“True,” Jean answered, followed by murmurs of agreement.

“She just needs time to cool off and, uh, give birth,” Marco said.

Ymir sat up. “You guys are saying… you mean like…I smothered her?”

“S plus smother equals mother,” Eren said. They all agreed it was the wisest thing he’d ever said (Connie: “He did, like, WORD math!”), and clapped him on the back. That brought something like a smile to Ymir’s face. She was just about to thank them when the doctor walked in.

“Ymir? Are you ready to meet your daughter?”

“I…what kind of fucking quest—I mean YEAH.”

“She’s perfect. Like you,” Ymir said, and Historia smiled sleepily. The baby squirmed and shot out a tiny fist that made Ymir gasp. She already had an impressive tuft of golden hair falling on her forehead.

“I really am sorry,” Historia said again.

Ymir shook her head. “No. This one’s on me.”

“Hey, Yim?”

“Hm?”

“Do something for me.”

“Yeah. Anyth—I mean, what?”

“Just…never leave me again.”

Ymir smiled and leaned in for a kiss. “Whatever you say, Hissy.”

**Author's Note:**

> [x](https://acerinky.tumblr.com)


End file.
